ABSTRACT
The year 1987 began with the periodic enquiry from the Soviet side. It was in 1987 that the author learned of a twinning delegation coming from the Crimea, the first ever official guests from there. In 1987 trouble was already brewing in Nagorny Karabakh, an enclave of Moslem Azerbaïdjan mainly inhabited by Armenians with close ties to their home country. At the beginning of the fourth century Armenia was the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion. During 1988 the author had also come to know another remarkable political personality. Galina Starovoitova, a friend of both Sakharov and Rost, knew, as did members of the liberal intelligentsia a century earlier, that the whole political system had to change. For nearly twenty years the author had been going back and forth to Russia, building bridges between politicians, professional people, those who work in the media and the arts – in short, opinion-formers.
